An Interview with Larry Albright

Neon Artist

The neon sign is an inextricable part of the urban landscape
whose beginnings go back over seventy years. Once used solely to draw attention
to diners, bars, theatres and the like, today examples of signage from the
thirties through the sixties are exhibited in art galleries. This is an example
of advertising illustration developed under a craft ethic being redefined as
'functional art.'

In contrast to its use in displays, several fine artists over
the last 30 years have used neon as an art medium. Larry Albright is one of
these artists. His work has been shown in major exhibitions and is in permanent
collections worldwide. Aside from his artistic work with plasma globes and neon
sculpture, he is known for his development of the mass produced "Eye of the
Storm" and "White Lightning" plasma globes developed for the consumer market
and for his lighting designs for the movie industry. (AW)

Interview with Larry Albright

by

Christian Schiess

A pioneer in the development of plasma globes, this artist is better
known for his work as a specialty lighting effects designer for film directors
such as Steven Speilberg and Francis Ford Coppola.

AS AN ARTIST, YOU HAVE DEVELOPED A UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP WITH HOLLYWOOD
AND HAVE COMPLETED SPECIAL EFFECTS WORK ON SEVERAL MOVIE PROJECTS. HOW DID THAT
BEGIN?

Speilberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was one of the
first films I worked on. I knew some of the people who were initially working
on the film, and they were trying to get a new kind of realism with the scale
models and the special effects props. In order to do that, the models had to be
on camera for very long periods of time, with the camera shooting through a
small aperture to increase the depth of field. They wanted to get away form a
phony Japanese sci-fi look, which looks too much like close-up photography of
scale modes. So what it boils down to is literally running the camera for weeks
at a time on some of the shots and scenes.

Camera exposures might take a minute or several minutes per frame, and
then the model or the camera would be moved slightly and another frame exposed.
The models are made of very flimsy materials so the light bulbs tended to melt
them. They tried strobe lights too, but they didn't turn out very
satisfactorily either. Neon, although it isn't incredibly bright, ran cool and
didn't melt down the models. Also, once it was inside the model, it would run
continuously for days, weeks - forever, without anyone having to reopen the
fragile models to replace burned out bulbs. Neon turned out to be a very
successful solution, and the film industry has been happy with it ever since.
Neon is now standard in special effects and motion control photography.

WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR OTHER FILM PROJECTS?

The same group from Close Encounters also worked on Star
Wars to solve and refine what are called "blue screen techniques." These
people are professional problems solvers, and I really enjoy working with them;
I like demanding, experimental projects. In Star Wars they were usually
moving the camera instead of the model, which was stationary and mounted on
pylons, but the effect was still the same. All the camera photography was done
in front of a big blue background, and everything except the model was blue -
the pylons, supports, etc.

All the blue would drop out of the scene during the photography, and,
later during editing, star fields, other footage or whatever else they might
need would be added. The trick was to have an even, blue-field background, To
develop this, we worked with special phosphor-coated tubes, camera lens filters
and spectrophotometers which actually measured the intensity of the blue, right
down to the wave length. The work was very experimental and went way beyond the
"folk music" of neon. I like that, because I have a science dilettante
background, and I've also done a lot of photography in the past.

DO YOU WANT TO DISCUSS ANYTHING FROM YOUR OTHER FILM PROJECTS - STAR
TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, ONE FROM THE HEART, FOXFIRE, BLADE RUNNER, BUCKAROO
BONSAI, GOONIES...?

Yes, Francis Ford Coppola's film One From the Heart was very
challenging, because they wanted neon miniaturized on a scale much smaller than
anything I'd done before. That required me to start over again with everything.
According to the drawings I had to scale, the neon was down to 2mm, simulating
large 18mm neon tubes. Two millimeters is about the size of pencil lead, and
was way beyond what anyone had done previously. So everything had to be figured
out - how to pump it, bombard it, proper filling pressure - and instead of a
footage chart, an "inchage" chart had to be developed. There was a lot of
research involved, but the budget was there. For instance, I had one woman who
worked on coating the tubes, and she ended up being my mini-coating department
technician. This couldn't be done commercially, so these tiny 2 mm tubes were
individually coated and inspected using a light table to check for flaws. It
was like handling eggs.

She would mark each piece individually, indicating where the good coated
parts were on the tube, and then she would carefully store them until they were
needed. Initially, I tried making small 2mm electrodes, but eventually I went
through EGL, using one of its special-order varieties. I even had to make my
own torches to bend the 2mm tubing. I had a three-way cross-fire that had the
smallest tips we could get. I made a ribbon-burner with the help of a friend's
milling machine. It as only one inch long.

Bill Concannon did much of the actual bending, which was very
experimental because the swivel set and the blow hose weighed more than the
unit and sometimes would pull the unit off the table or break it. They were all
made from soft glass. Initially we made our own glass tubing as well, drawing
out thin strands until I found the ideal wall thickness, ID and OD
specifications - inside and outside diameters. Once I had these dimensions, I
had a batch of extremely consistent tubing manufactured for the project.

WHAT FILLING PRESSURES DID YOU USE FOR THESE UNITS?

Usually we found that we couldn't exceed 15mm of pressure, no matter
which gas we were using. We also discovered that filling with neon was very
difficult: it's what is called "hard starting." It's hard to trigger red gas,
so the small units with red gas would flicker no matter what we did. If we
exceeded 15mm of filling pressure, the tubes became too hot. We also found it
very difficult to operate a unite over 12 in. So, we used mercury argon for
most of the units and special red phosphors if we needed red or warm colors. We
lost a lot of units just getting the mercury in, because when you have a tiny
ball of mercury in 2mm tubing, you have to use some violence to get it in the
unit to both electrodes. We broke several in the process.

DID YOU HAVE TO BUILD YOUR OWN POWER SUPPLIES AND TRANSFORMERS?

No, I was able to use off-the-shelf transformers. I used resistance
ballast transformers, and to achieve the proper scale of brightness, they
operated at 3-4 milliamps. By the way, some of these miniature pieces
originally made for the film (One From the Heart) have been in several
museum shows and are still ticking after all these years.

HAS ALL THE RESEARCH YOU PUT INTO MINIATURIZING TO 2MM LED TO OTHER
POSSIBILITIES?

It was a drill. It was fun to see it all happen, but it was very
difficult and frustrating at times, and it took a whole crew to get it going.
What it has done is allowed slightly larger neon (5mm) to be made much more
easily, making it more available for special effects projects.

HOW DID YOU INITIALLY DEVELOP THIS EXPERTISE IN NEON? THROUGH A NEON
SIGNSHOP BACKGROUND?

No, as an artist I was making a lot of Rube Goldberg - type machines. I
started out making stainless steel sculptures and whimsical toys. I found a way
to use gas to weld stainless with this magic flux, and the welded sculptures
started becoming more and more elaborate. Things that clanked and clinked with
timers and relays - this was all happening in the late '60s, early '70s. Then I
made a transition and started using found neon pieces in my sculptures. The
first pieces were small neon helixes used in road barricades. They were
wonderfully designed and built with small power supplies. From then on I became
more interested in using neon. Initially, I'd go to signshops and ask them to
fabricate thing for me, but I ran into a catch-22: I found that a lot of the
traditional neon men didn't know how to play with neon, even if you paid them -
because of some older work ethic, I suppose.

IN OTHER WORDS, YOU WOULD PAY THEM TO FABRICATE YOUR DESIGNS FOR YOUR
SCULPTURES?

Yeah, but it was funny - I would go in and ask how much they made an
hour. Then I would say, let me give you that and more, and could you do this
for me. And many times, they had too many channel letters to do to deal with me
and my projects. Experimenting and playing was not working. Once I had a big
crackle tube filled with very expensive little glass balls that this guy built
for me. When he bombarded it, it blew up. And as I was picking up the glass
balls off his floor, I knew I couldn't push him any further. But my interest
continued, because I'd seen the crackle tube effect a long time ago, and I
wanted to use it in my work. I tried again with another guy who bombarded a
piece for me, and it worked. I entered the finished sculpture in a contest, the
Barnsdall Park Festival in L.A., and I got a cash purchase prize for it. So,
one of my buddies pushed me into buying and building my on neon equipment.

I finally found some guys in Bakersfield, CA, who wanted $300.00 for a
neon shop called Road Runner Sign Service. So I went to Bakersfield in a
friend's van and came back with a load of dirty, grimy equipment, and I really
didn't know what it was, but I was assured that there was one of everything. I
started sorting it out, asking questions, and it turned out that there was one
of everything - a bombarder, choke, ribbon-burner, cross-fires, hand torches, a
broken manifold and cases of broken glass. The bombarder I'm still using to
this day, but I've already phased out a lot of the other equipment.

SO AS AN ARTIST, YOU'RE SELF-TAUGHT IN NEON?

Yes. At the time, there weren't many other artists that I was aware of
using neon in L.A. Nor were there any schools.

DID YOU GET ANY TUTORING FROM A LOCAL SIGNMAKER ?

There were a few people who helped me to a certain point, but not
beyond; it was an enigma to me. I think a lot of it is because they worked very
hard through an apprentice system to learn their craft. In the beginning, they
did a lot of crap work and thought maybe if they were good, somebody would
decide to teach them a little bit. But, they paid a lot of dues. So, when I
came to them asking for help, they just weren't programmed for it. They weren't
really teachers in the sense of going to a university and getting everything on
a silver platter just because you're interested in the subject and think
someone should teach you. They got everything the hard way.

But finally I found out about Neon Techniques and Handling, a
book by Samuel Miller (published by ST Publications). Someone finally
condescended to tell me about this book, and that was wonderful; it's an
incredible book, and it helped me very much, I have a lot of respect for Samuel
Miller, and that book was remarkably well written, My first copy was given to
me by someone who found it at Acres of Books in Long Beach, CA. Here was this
guy, not even somebody I would consider asking for information, with this book.
He gave me the book and also recommended a very good Chinese restaurant, and
I've enjoyed them both. I still have the book, but unfortunately, the
restaurant's gone. I have several editions of the book now - the first
hardbound edition and the others. It's nice to have them all, because over the
years, they've been edited, and things have been added.

SO YOUR CONNECTION WITH THE NEON SIGN INDUSTRY IN TERMS OF BACKGROUND
AND TRAINING IS LIMITED?

Yes. I've made signs, but I've never really done it full time as a
vocation. I did it only to pay the rent. I don't have a traditional art school
background, though I hung around art schools and came up through the junkyard
school of art, finding my own personal path through the art maze - a
Philistine. I do have a strong electronics background and scientific and
technical skills, which have helped me a lot. And I've acquired all this neon
equipment and skills. I've never lost my desire to play and experiment with the
stuff.

DO YOU RELY ON THE NEON SIGN INDUSTRY FOR A LOT OF YOUR SUPPLIES, AND
ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE DIVERSITY AND AVAILABILITY?

Yes, absolutely. It seems that, especially in the last five or six
years, they've come out with a lot of different transformers and other
equipment. Also, I purchase a lot of material from P.J. Mason in England and
also from companies in France. Masonlite has a much better spectrum of colors,
and it's been doing a lot of development with solid-state transformers, but I
also rely on the scientific industry as a source of materials and supplies. I
think if an artist is responsible, he knows that his supplies don't just
magically come to him. But if he has that attitude, he's not going to get help
from some people; you have to realize that some suppliers are doing you a favor
with your exotic neon needs, and you have to to be considerate and judicious
with their time. I've generally had good luck with suppliers. There always
seems to be someone who'll go the extra distance for me. But again, if I'm
doing something that's getting too bizarre, I usually revert to Pyrex and then
I'm into the world of scientific laboratory glass, And now, most of the stuff I
do is in Pyrex.

MOVING ON TO OTHER AREAS OF YOUR WORK, YOU'RE CERTAINLY IN THE FOREFRONT
- IF NOT THE FATHER - OF THE PLASMA SPHERES THAT WE'RE SEEING A LOT OF NOW.

I don't want to make any claims, but I was definitely one of the first,
and for a long time, I was certainly the only one I knew of who was working in
that area.

YOU'VE PUT SEVERAL YEARS INTO EXPERIMENTING, REFINING AND DEVELOPING
PLASMA GLOBES AND PLASMA EFFECTS....

Yes, it's been very rewarding, and I feel it's just the tip of the
iceberg. There's much more out there to be discovered.

WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THE PLASMA EFFECT, AND HOW IT COMPARES TO NEON, MORE
SPECIFICALLY?

Primarily, it's the use of higher frequency electricity, but essentially
there are more similarities between the plasma effect and neon than there are
differences. The high frequency electricity places the plasma in what is called
the "skin effect." If the viewer touches the sphere, he or she becomes the
second electrode because, at those high frequencies, the surface of the body is
very conductive. Eventually the electricity travels back to the original power
source, completing a loop. With neon, the path of electricity is more tightly
controlled and contained with two specific electrodes. But this is not a true
plasma in the physics sense of the word. The term "plasma" is being used in a
generic way to describe this family of effects. Plasma in the physics sense of
the word refers to an ionized, high temperature fourth state of matter,

Actually, one of the first commercially available plasma devices on the
market was something called the "Corona Concert." It came out in the late '70s
and was essentially an unaltered, off-the-shelf, argon-filled filament light
bulb, powered by a high-frequency generator. It was very pale, but in a dark
room it did a lot of interesting things. Unfortunately, however, it was
short-lived commercially. My work with plasma globes, or lighting spheres as I
sometime call them began in the early '70s - probably around 1972 - when I
first began working with high-frequency transformers. After building some of my
own high-frequency transformers, I discovered some very exciting things which I
incorporated into a few of my sculptures. At the time, it was not something I
wanted commercially involved with; I was only interested in using the plasma
effect as an element in my sculptures.

But, about a year ago, I was approached by the Rabbit Co., which wanted
to market a plasma globe, and I decided to capitalize on all my research and
work. The people there were very sensitive to working with me and with what I
wanted to do. They wanted to develop a quality product with good color
combinations, and they gave me final say over how the product would look and
how it was to be designed, So we developed "Eye of the Storm," a plasma globe
which has been selling very well. My role is not in manufacturing but in
creating and developing, which has given me a lot of freedom. They're being
manufactured overseas, and now I'm working on the next generation. A year ago,
I couldn't spell the word entrepreneur, and I still can't.

YOUR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, THEN, IS WHY YOU HAVE SO MUCH UNUSUAL
EQUIPMENT IN YOUR STUDIO THAT YOU WOULDN'T NORMALLY SEE IN THE AVERAGE NEON
SIGNSHOP?

Yes, I use a glass lathe, a convection oven for out-gassing glass and
induction heaters to process electrodes. I use a lot of Pyrex equipment and
laboratory glass burners. I try to do as much as I can with my abilities, but
if I get in over my head, I work with a scientific glass fabricator. I've also
had to build some special equipment specifically for the large 30-in. plasma
globes, I've built for Walt Disney, Michael Jackson, EXPO and others.

ARE THERE ANY LIMITATIONS ON HOW LARGE THESE GLOBES CAN GET?

Only money. I'm using the largest globes (30 in.) that are currently
being manufactured. They're made by Corning and come overseas from England.
They're Pyrex glass and cost about $3,000 apiece. They hold about 200 liters of
inert gas, approximately one atmosphere of pressure, so there's a lot of money
just in glass and gas. The power supply is 110 volts and of course a very
important part of the display. With different types of power supplies you get
different displays. Much of the research I've been doing lately has been with
the power supplies, because it's a subject as important as the gas fill mixture
ratio research I've done. It's like the chicken and egg problem sometimes,
because, given a proper gas fill mix, you then have to figure out what power
supply would be the optimum design, But you can't figure out at the same time
which fill mix and power supply are going to be optimum. It's like solving
simultaneous equations. How do you know you've got a good power supply unless
you have a good gas fill-mix ratio? It's all experimental.

WHAT OTHER AREAS ARE YOU EXPLORING IN YOUR WORK?

I'm very interested in crackle tubes, and I plan to put more energy into
that direction.

WHO ARE SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO'VE INSPIRED YOU IN YOUR WORK?

Nikola Tesla, for one. I'm an enthusiastic subscriber to the Tesla Coil
Builders Assn., published by Harry Goldman (RD 3, Box 181, Glens Fall, NY 12801
). I think Tesla was a genius and an enigma. I am inspired by his work, but
there are sides of him I don't relate to. He had so many patents, and of
course, his alternating current work was phenomenal. I'm also inspired by
someone Nikola Tesla was in awe of, Sir William Crookes, who in the 1800's was
experimenting with low-pressure electrified gas tubes, such as Geissler tubes.

MUCH OF YOUR INSPIRATION IS FROM HISTORIC SCIENCE FIGURES RATHER THAN
ARTISTS. BUT, DO YOU WANT TO MENTION ANY SPECIFIC ARTISTS?

Yes, James Turrell and Ed Kienholtz, and specifically in the plasma
area, Bill Parker, who was Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium in San
Francisco.